Michael Mulgrew Hails New APPR Advance Teacher Evaluation System

Remember this while you're collecting your artifacts and preparing for your 4-6 observations on 22 Danielson domains and wondering why you're being evaluated using ELA test scores even though you're an art teachers or concerned that the state is going to align the PSAT scores as the baseline for Regents scores and evaluate teachers with that data:

Michael Mulgrew LOVES this new evaluation system.

Seriously, he does - he told us in an e mail today:

As you all are aware, this new system was the result of binding arbitration presided over by state Education Commissioner John King when we could not come to an agreement with Mayor Bloomberg on a teacher evaluation system required by state law. Mayor Bloomberg never wanted an evaluation system that could help teachers. He only wanted a system to beat up teachers

But the state teacher evaluation law is clear in its intent to support the work teachers do inside the classroom, and that is exactly how we plan to see it used in New York City.

It was clear to every teacher in the room in my school yesterday that the new Advance teacher evaluation system imposed by John King and hailed by Michael Mulgrew does nothing of the sort like support teachers.

It is a "gotcha" system plain and simple, so complex and convoluted in how it is devised that not even the "experts" in the school who sat through hours of NYCDOE explanations about the system could properly explain how the test score components are going to work.

That Mulgrew is defending this system in an email at all tells you all you need to know about how much the UFT is invested in it.

Mulgrew and Iannuzzi helped devise it, they stood on stage with Cuomo after he forced them to drop the successful lawsuit they had mounted against the Regents over the testing component that went above and beyond the RttT law, Mulgrew was happy to see King named an "independent arbitrator" who got to impose a system of evaluation on NYC teachers and once the nightmare system was imposed by Reformy John, Mulgrew attacked anybody who criticized the system.

He keeps saying this system has "multiple measures of evaluation" - but when test scores trump all else (get declared "ineffective" on the test score components and you have to be declared "ineffective" overall!) , there are no multiple measures of evaluation.

In effect, the 40% testing component is 100% if you come up "i-rated" on it.

Why doesn't Mulgrew criticize that component?  Why does he paper over the problems in this system?

Because this is Mulgrew's baby, pure and simple and he likes it.

Sure, he says he wants to make sure the implementation is fair and just.

But what the hell does that mean?

When you have a system that is totally unworkable, complex, convoluted and inexplicable to parents and teachers, how do you make sure the implementation is fair and just?

I have written that I think that many teachers who have been largely apolitical about union politics are going to be politicized and radicalized after a couple of years of this system.

I saw that in the room yesterday as administrators tried to explain this Advance system to people.

Compare Mulgrew's email to UFT members with what Julie Cavanagh wrote last week about the APPR Advance system.

Everybody in the PD room yesterday agreed more with Cavanagh's characterization of the system than Mulgrew's.

They can bring Leo Casey back to sling all the crap they want about how the system scrapes the skies.

People know a "gotcha" system when they see it.

And that's what the Advance APPR teacher evaluation system is.